Last chapter… I apologize if anyone hasn't gotten alerts/hasn't gotten replies to their reviews - the site hasn't been sending me emails for a couple days now and I'm getting things mixed up. XDD Thank you so much for reading! :)

L's face is beautiful in its last moments of life.

Of course, it's always had its own unique kind of prettiness - but as it whitens with pain, as the lips tremble with unspoken accusations, as the eyes cloud with fear and betrayal and despair and so much wonderful emotion, the effect is exquisite. Stunning. Breathtaking.

Of course, he hoped it wouldn't come to this - hoped, quietly but powerfully, that he'd be able to win the world's greatest detective over to his side and spare his life. But a part of him always knew that there was no hope of that, that of course it would come to this. And it has.

Killing L feels daring, destructive, and heartbreaking - like smashing stained glass or taking a match to the Mona Lisa. Because that brilliant, elegant, ingenious mind really is like a work of art, and its destruction is necessary but still such a terrible waste. And compared to the quicksilver intellect dying behind darkening eyes, he's beginning to think that La Gioconda would actually be far less of a loss.

The light is fading from those eyes now, the life almost gone, and he smiles, because what else he can do? The murderer in him smirks, because it's so satisfying to see the horror as he looks down like the Grim Reaper; and the artist in him smiles, because that face is so incredibly lovely with the stain of Death spreading over it; and the child in him beams, because their games are over and L's lost and he's won. So he smiles and holds the weak, limp form a little tighter in his arms, and L shivers faintly as his eyes slip closed.

The Fireman found him. The Nurse raised him. Quillish Wammy cared for him. Nate River needed him. Mihael Keehl loved him. Misa Amane pitied him. Light Yagami was his friend. But they're all gone now, and he's alone, save for his murderer cradling him with impossibly gentle bloodstained hands, like something precious and fragile that regrettably must be destroyed - but that he is going to destroy with his own hands and that nobody else will touch because it is his and even though L must die, it's going to be done gently, and with respect, and with arms that aren't going to let him go.

Kira holds him at the end.